The invention relates generally to a system and a method for monitoring the in-home activities of persons living independently. More particularly, the invention relates to a system and a method for determining whether the activities of persons living independently are of interest as being unusual or whether the activities are normal.
With medical advancements and increased attention to proper nutrition and sufficient exercise, the populace in the western civilization is living longer. For example, the number of elderly persons residing in the United States is increasing, and with the advancing age of the baby boomer generation, the number of elderly persons in the United States will increase significantly over the next several decades. Additionally, increased awareness and understanding of various mental and physical disabilities has led to an increase in the number of persons having diminished mental and/or physical faculties living independently.
With the increase in elderly and disabled persons living independently has come anxiety that these elderly and disabled persons are safe and secure in their own residences. There is increased anxiety by the elderly and disabled living alone that they may become injured or incapacitated and be unable to summon assistance. That anxiety is often shared by loved ones living at a distance from the elderly and/or disabled living independently.
Currently, the anxiety felt by the elderly and disabled living alone, as well as the anxiety felt by their loved ones, is addressed through several avenues. One way to ease anxiety is through frequent visits to the home by a caregiver. Such visits can be intrusive, time consuming, and often inconvenient and not appreciated. Another way is for the elderly or disabled person to move out of the home and move into a facility better able to monitor his health. This, however, strips the person of his independence, is costly and is often unwelcome. Another way is through technological assistance or monitoring of the person in the home.
Such technological systems that assist persons in their home include Personal Emergency Response Systems. In these systems the elderly or disabled individual wears a watch, pendant or other like device and presses a button in the event of an emergency, such as a fall. The depressed button enables an alarm signal. A central monitoring facility provides assistance by responding to the alarm signal and calls the individual to identify the problem. The facility can also call a predetermined list of contacts, such as relatives, neighbors or emergency services, as required by the context of the situation. While a valuable service, these systems only identify problems that occur when the individual is able to press the emergency button.
Some known in-home monitoring systems attempt to detect unusual activity, such as, for example, an abnormally long quiet period within the house, by arbitrarily choosing “daytime” and “nighttime” parameters and sending an alert if there is no activity for at least five hours during the “daytime” time period. These known in-home monitoring systems provide the resident with a button which can be pressed to indicate whether the resident is home or is away. Such known systems oftentimes fail to accurately reflect real daytime and nighttime patterns of the resident. Further, the resident's responsibility to indicate whether he is in the house or away often goes unfulfilled, leading to a high false alert rate and low sensitivity for such known systems.
Thus, there remains a need for a system and method for ascertaining whether the in-home activities of a person living independently are within the norm for such a person or whether they are unusual or irregular.